Former Prime Minister and NASA Coalition leader Raila Odinga blasts the mass failure of this year’s Kenya Certificate of Education (KCSE) candidates-calls for the probe of the examination results.

The following is Raila Odinga’s full statement on the just released results of Kenya Certificate of Education (KCSE) examinations.

MY STATEMENT ON THE RELEASE OF KCSE RESULTS

Results of this year’s Kenya Certificate of Education (KCSE) examinations are out. We wish to congratulate all our young boys and girls who have excelled in these exams for realizing their dreams that are intertwined with the hopes and dreams of our nation.

We congratulate the teachers and the schools for the exemplary performance they have recorded. The girls have continued with their good run and I encourage them to stay the course. We recognize the improvements at the Kenya National Examination Council that have seen a reduction in cheating and speedy release of results.

I encourage those who have not been lucky never to lose confidence in what they are capable of achieving.

I am however deeply concerned at the high number of students that are failing to make the transition to university. The overall number of candidates with minimum university entry qualification, Grade C+ and above stands at only 11.38. Close to 90 per cent of the KCSE candidates have failed.

This is very worrying. Our country needs skilled manpower to achieve its ambitious growth goals. Making the transition from high school to university is a significant, though not the only step, towards the realization of those national goals.

As the country commits resources to free learning and scales up enrollment, the whole purpose and value for money is lost when close to 90 per cent of those students eventually fail.

As a society, we must listen to the cries of the candidates, the parents and teachers’ unions on this matter and have a serious conversation about this worrying trend of very low transition to university that has been witnessed in recent years.